Elaine Biech

Training and development can be incredibly rewarding, but it is also filled with challenges. This Cheat Sheet aims to cut to the chase in several key areas that trainers deal with all the time. You'll find succinct tips on avoiding pitfalls, designing great visuals, and loads of quick ideas to improve your sessions.

There are so many things you may think about to facilitate and encourage participation in a training and development session. Don't worry about learning and perfecting all of them. Many of them will become as natural as good communication skills. That's because many are natural. In effect, it comes down to your reaction to the learners and the learning situation.

Have you ever wondered why you spent the time to train your employees, but they still don’t seem to do what you trained them to? Include this 12-pack of good ideas in your training, and you can guarantee success. Be prepared. State the objectives. Be organized. Use visuals. Answer questions. Be enthusiastic.

Developing a more effective training session is definitely in your best interest. When designing a training session, ensure that you maximize the learning that occurs by doing the following things: Build in practical, relevant examples. Make it interactive; learning is not passive. Enrich with content; don’t underestimate your learners’ potential.

You have many ways to ensure participation in training and development. Mostly it comes down to your reaction to the learners and their learning situation. How do you react to ensure an environment that encourages the best opportunities for participation? How do you react to create the best learning experience?

You want your training session to be specific to your goals and provide information that can’t be found in generic training resources. To set your training apart from materials your participants can get online or from a book, be sure to do the following in your training: Create a supportive learning environment.

If you really want your training to take hold and be retained, you need to have effective visuals. Visuals must enhance — not detract from — your training delivery. Be sure that you follow the VISUAL laws. Visible: Words on visuals are large enough, and you don’t block the view. Interesting: Oriented to the learner, visuals make use of pictures, graphs, color, and bullets.

Everyone makes mistakes, but some are bigger than others. When you are training your employees, your mistakes can make the difference between business success and failure. Steer clear of committing these sins: Starting late and wasting time Being poorly prepared and lacking content knowledge Displaying distracting habits Ignoring participants’ needs and interrupting their questions Lacking enthusiasm Reading from a script Neglecting to tell participants WIIFM (“what’s in it for me?